FCC Adds to Technical Advisory Council

The Federal Communications Commission has announced the names of six more appointees to the Technical Advisory Council.

Members provide guidance to the chairman. The FCC said the new members “span a range of expertise, including the financial sector, system integrators and leading broadband technology companies.”

Most of the current council were named last fall. The newly reconstituted TAC met in December and identified areas where FCC action could “stimulate the nation’s broadband evolution.”

According to a commission summary, these include: opportunities for greater infrastructure-sharing among industry sectors such as smart grid and healthcare; reducing impediments to building next-generation infrastructure; ensuring that the nation’s Internet continues to evolve competitively to next-generation features such as IPv6; and providing incentives for accelerating the retirement of legacy technologies and systems.

New TAC members are:

•Shahid Ahmed, an executive with Accenture Cisco Business Group, Cisco and Accenture’s partnership;

•Gen. Wesley Clark, a retired Army general who is chairman/CEO of a strategic consulting firm and chair of an investment bank, he’ll represent intelligence and security firm Tiversa;

•Paul Mankiewich, chief architect for Juniper Networks’ Mobility Solutions and a former technical executive for Alcatel-Lucent;

•John Marinho, Dell Inc.’s director of enterprise mobility solutions;

•Deven Parekh, managing director with Insight Venture Partners;

•Russ Gyurek of Cisco’s Global Technology Leadership Team.

The TAC formed in 2003 to keep the FCC abreast of changes in fast-growing fields such as cable television, telephony and the Internet.